Nigeria: Wages of sin

The wages of sin is death”, says the Great Book. Empirically, we know that death is always preceded by some sort of weakness. Sin sets on a process of progressive weakening which ultimately ends in death.

All of nature and all of history, as they concern us Nigerians, combined to give us a country that was meant and endowed to be prosperous and great in the world. Though the human agents, the British, who carved out that country and gave it initial structure, were manipulative, crooked and wicked in much of what they did, our country, as it sprang into tentative being at independence was nevertheless a potentially mighty entity eager and rearing to fulfill its awesome destiny among the countries of the earth. But then the power of sin set in – the power of unrestrained human will, the urge and resolve of some in the house to grab and engross what belongs to the whole household and to deprive the rest. As in all cases where sin strikes out to act, the urge to grab and engross and deprive others was needless. Sharing in order and mutual respect, our chances of prospering together were huge. But by thus setting in motion a process of orgiastic scrambling and wrangling, we have bruised every member of the household, generated a barbarous culture, and mindlessly pushed our country onto the path of sickness and death. Today, the sickness has advanced so far that the question uppermost on most of our minds is whether it is possible at all for our country to exist much longer.

These days, we are all living in horror as we watch our country going through the dance of death – with every single index of national strength pulverized and decaying. Greed, avarice and graft rule supreme over all institutions, all duty performances, and all inter-personal dealings. Hardly any Nigerian public official, high or low, offers any service to the public these days without first demanding bribes. Nigeria teaches and acculturates its citizens to despise truly productive enterprise, and to give their intellect and passion to hustling for shares from the bounties stolen from the national wealth.

Security is the first benefit of citizenship of a country, but in the Nigeria of greed and graft, security has disappeared. The average Nigerian, if criminally abused or robbed, can no longer be sure whether it is safe to seek help from the police and the legal system. If the miscreant bribes the police and court officials enough (as is now the norm), the victim who seeks help from the law-enforcement agencies will only get himself into bigger trouble – and may need a lot of money to dig himself out.

We are constantly hearing stories of military officers stealing weapons from the nation’s armouries for sale to criminals and terrorists, of funds meant for running military operations being criminally shared by military commanders, and of high military officers building or buying multi-billion naira estates. In the circumstance, the Nigerian military has lost all professionalism and all efficiency, with the result that we Nigerians feel helpless before the rampages of a rag-tag hoodlum gang like Boko Haram. From reports and experience, most Nigerians know that Nigeria’s secret service is a beehive of corruption within which even the most junior officers can quickly amass fortunes – from their contacts with public resources and with members of the public. This past week, each of these agencies of public safety (the police, the military and the secret service) scored a first in degradation and corruption in the history of human governance. Each of them, operating as if they are private entities by themselves and for themselves, and not publicly owned agencies, wrote letters to the nation’s electoral servants to say that they will not be available to give Nigerians security in the nationally scheduled, and all-important, act of voting to elect a new government – letters that, in a proper country, should qualify for charges of treason.

The electoral commission, ludicrously called “Independent National Electoral Commission”, is well known and deeply despised by all Nigerians for what it is – a stink-pot of corruption and betrayal, an ever ready tool of bandits in power for distorting and stultifying the will of Nigerians at elections. This past week, some eminent Nigerians led by a former Vice-President of Nigeria (Alex Ekweme) hauled staggering accusations against INEC, to the effect that INEC has been engaged in a huge plot to rig the forth-coming presidential election. And, as of the time that these allegations were being aired, certain incredible materials were also circulating in Nigeria and abroad alleging a plot by some highly placed public officials and law-enforcement commanders to rig a recent election in one Nigerian state. Of course, given the sordid history of the electoral commission since independence, no Nigerian is seriously surprised or bothered by these allegations. These are the sorts of things that INEC has always done. Of course too, no authority in Nigeria (presidency, or Attorney General, or police) is expected to step forward to investigate these horrendously criminal allegations. For Nigeria, governance belongs in the mud pond of corruption and crimes.

Finally, over this massive mud pond of corruption and crimes reigns the official whom we “elect” as president of our country. He is commander-in-chief, patron and rewarder of all processes of the corruption. That is the way the mess was designed and nurtured – constitutionally, politically and morally. In all essence, it is not fair to blame any particular president for these ills. I once said in this column that I agree with President Jonathan’s statement that he is not the source or cause of Nigeria’s mess. But it is fair to say that he came, he saw the mess, and he revelled in it – revelled in it more than any president before him. Of course, I would agree with the overwhelming majority of Nigerians at home and abroad that President Jonathan does not deserve to have one more term as our president, but I would not saddle him with the historic responsibility of plunging our country into the mud in which it is now gasping for breath.

This sad story of Nigeria has a powerful lesson: If you belong to a household, don’t proceed to break down the moral fence protecting it – no matter your incentives and possible gains for feeling like doing so. The people who started at independence to disrupt and distort the fragile balance of Nigeria’s politics could never have imagined that the consequences of what they were starting then would ever be as bad as today. Today, nobody, no group, is benefiting from the horrors that have been concocted. All of us Nigerians, as individuals and nationalities, are losers –losers in prospect, losers in hope, and losers in image among the peoples of the earth. If Nigeria does finally drown in the mess which we have created, we Nigerians of the generations since 1960 to now will go down in the annals of human history as the incompetents and moral dwarfs who were handed a country with all the possibilities of greatness and who made only a mess of it. It is not a good load to bear in history.